Understand your customers

Talk to real users, define who you're for, and read the market clearly.

What founders use for understand your customers, ranked by how many answers lean on it.

  1. This piece lays the B2B and B2C cases side by side so you can see that the axis of specificity is genuinely different: B2B... Geeks for Growth Article · About a 10 minute read How Do Startups Market B2B vs B2C Differently? Geeks for Growth
  2. This is the sharpest answer to the actual worry: Cohen names the sample-of-one problem directly and unpacks the seven hidden... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen, founder of WP Engine) Article · ~2,500 words, 12 minute read "I scratched my own itch" isn't good enough Jason Cohen
  3. For a two-sided marketplace, the first real decision is which side to define and win first, and this essay makes the case... NFX Essay · Long read (about 25 minutes) 19 Tactics to Solve the Chicken-or-Egg Problem and Grow Your Marketplace James Currier
  4. This is the most concrete answer to which of your two customers to define first, built from interviews with 17 major... Lenny's Newsletter Article · Long read (about 20 minutes) How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business, Part 2: Cracking the Chicken-and-Egg Problem (Supply vs. Demand) Lenny Rachitsky
  5. Most teams drift not because they disagree on who the customer is, but because nobody wrote down who the customer is NOT. This... M1-Project Article · Roughly a 10 minute read Negative Buyer Persona: What It Is and How to Create One Anton Mart
  6. This gives you a concrete, bottom-up way to check whether your niche can actually fund the next stage, instead of guessing.... ktulrich.com Article · Article, approx. 10 minute read TAM, SAM, SOM, and the Beachhead Market: Estimating Market Size Karl T. Ulrich
  7. This is the honest version of the horizontal-product problem, told by a founder who lived it at Airtable, a tool that genuinely... First Round Review Essay · Long read, roughly 20 minutes Airtable's Path to Product-Market Fit: Lessons for Building Horizontal Products Andrew Ofstad (Airtable co-founder), interviewed by Todd Jackson
  8. This lays the two axes side by side: narrowing by industry (vertical) versus spreading across markets and geographies... Aexus Article · ~8 min read What is the difference between horizontal and vertical GTM strategies? Aexus
  9. Hoffman and Yeh explain why owning a market densely can beat covering more ground thinly, because network effects and local... Currency (Penguin Random House) Book · 336 pages Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh
  10. Skok names the multi-niche trap head on and backs it with a real portfolio-company story: a startup that chased a 2,500-branch... forEntrepreneurs Essay Focus and Market Segmentation David Skok
  11. This is the most concrete walkthrough of how to test a niche when you have nothing built yet: put up a page describing the... kromatic.com Essay · ~15 min read Fake Door / Smoke Test Kromatic (The Real Startup Book)
  12. Once you have decided it is time to move, this essay is the clearest short read on which direction to move in. Coelen lays out... Doctor Market Fit (Jeroen Coelen) Essay Five expansion strategies from your beachhead market Jeroen Coelen
  13. This is the clearest short case that how you reach customers is a real edge, not an afterthought behind the code. Horowitz... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Essay · About a 10 minute read Distribution Ben Horowitz
  14. Stark spends his career arguing that specializing is what lets you raise rates, which is the direct counter to the fear that a... jonathanstark.com Essay · ~5 min read Skill vs Market Specialization Jonathan Stark
  15. This is a concrete, hands-on guide to setting price by the value a buyer gets rather than by your costs, which is exactly the... Paddle Article · ~10 min read What is value-based pricing and how is it applied in SaaS? Paddle
  16. Bessemer's report is the most grounded, data-backed look at how Indian SaaS companies actually split between selling to India... Bessemer Venture Partners (Atlas) Article · Long report, roughly 20 to 30 minutes The Rise of SaaS in India Bessemer Venture Partners
  17. Janz's animals framework (mice, rabbits, deer, elephants, whales) reframes the whole niche question around one thing: what does... The Angel VC (Christoph Janz, Point Nine Capital) Essay · Long essay, roughly 15 to 20 minutes Five ways to build a $100 million business Christoph Janz
  18. Written by a VC, this makes the case that a small starting market is a strength, not a red flag, which is exactly the reframe... Equal Ventures Essay · Long read (approx. 15 min) Niche is the Next Big Thing Rick Zullo (Equal Ventures)
  19. This is the most direct answer to your question we could find: a step by step method for someone with a job and a few spare... The Bootstrapped Founder Essay · about a 20 minute read Finding an Audience for Your Side Business Arvid Kahl
  20. The faster horse line gets quoted to justify ignoring customers entirely, and that reading is wrong. Vlaskovits, a customer... Harvard Business Review Essay · Short read, about 800 words Henry Ford, Innovation, and That Faster Horse Quote Patrick Vlaskovits
  21. When a customer hands you feature X, the Five Whys is the simplest technique for drilling from that request down to the real... Productboard Article · Short read, about 5 minutes What Are the Five Whys (5 Whys) Productboard
  22. This piece names the exact bias behind the question: once you know a field cold, your brain literally cannot simulate not... SUE Behavioural Design Essay · ~15 min read The Curse of Knowledge at Work: Why Experts Can No Longer Explain Things Simply Astrid Groenewegen
  23. This is the deepest practical treatment of pulling the job out of a customer's behavior rather than their words. Moesta... Lioncrest Publishing Book · About 220 pages Demand-Side Sales 101: Stop Selling and Help Your Customers Make Progress Bob Moesta and Greg Engle
  24. When customers cannot articulate the job, the forces diagram gives you a structure for interpreting their behavior instead.... jobstobedone.org Article · About a 10 minute read The Four Forces of Progress: Push, Pull, Anxiety and Habit Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek

Show the next 24

The questions

Talking to customers & user research 18

Learn the truth without leading the witness.

How do I talk to customers without them just telling me what I want to hear? 23 → What questions should I actually ask in a customer interview? 22 → How many customer interviews do I need before I trust the signal? 24 → Where do I find people to interview when I have zero audience? 24 → How do I run customer discovery as an Indian founder building for Indian users? 24 → All 18 questions in Talking to customers & user research →
Defining your ideal customer 18

Know exactly who you're for (and who you're not).

What is an ideal customer profile and how do I define mine? 24 → How specific should my target customer be when I'm just starting? 24 → What's the difference between an ICP, a buyer persona, and a target market? 24 → How do I know if I'm targeting the wrong customer? 24 → Should I focus on one customer segment or serve everyone who'll pay? 23 → All 18 questions in Defining your ideal customer →
Finding your niche / beachhead 17

Win a tiny market completely before going wide.

What is a beachhead market and why does everyone say to start with one? 1 → How do I pick which niche to go after first? 2 → Isn't picking a tiny niche going to limit how big I can get? 2 → How do I know when I've won my niche and it's time to expand? 1 → How do I find a defensible niche in a market full of big incumbents? 2 → All 17 questions in Finding your niche / beachhead →
Understanding the problem (JTBD) 17

People hire products to do a job, find the job.

What does 'jobs to be done' actually mean? 2 → How is JTBD different from features, personas, or user needs? 2 → How do I actually uncover the job my customers are hiring my product for? 3 → Who are my real competitors once I think in jobs to be done? 3 → How do I turn a job to be done into product and messaging decisions? 2 → All 17 questions in Understanding the problem (JTBD) →
Competitive & market research 18

Know the landscape better than the incumbents.

How do I research my competitors properly? 2 → What if my customers say they have no competitors, is that good or bad? 2 → What tools should I use to track competitors and market landscape? 2 → How do I position against a bigger, better-funded competitor? 2 → How do I size the market and figure out if it's big enough? 2 → All 18 questions in Competitive & market research →
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